States like California…can’t afford to be hospitable to business while also funding massive public employee entitlements. …job-creating businesses flee big-government Blue States for limited-government Red States. In short order, Blue States find themselves in financial straits. …between 2000 and 2010, the big Blue States of New York, California, and Illinois chased off hundreds of thousands of residents taking billions in income with them ($45.6 billion, $29.4 billion, and $20.4 billion respectively). Each of these states have highly progressive, high-marginal rate tax codes. California, for example, has 10 income tax brackets and a top rate of 13.3 percent. New York has eight brackets and an 8.82 percent top rate. Where did all those formerly Blue State income go? To low-tax, Red State jurisdictions, including Florida (no income tax), Texas (no income tax), and Arizona (4.54 percent top rate). Those three alone raked in $67.3 billion, $17.7 billion, and $17.6 billion, respectively.

Before closing, I want to highlight one other passage from the Examiner column that touches on a very critical point.

Thanks to the few federalist principles that are still protected in the Constitution, Americans remain free to vote with their feet and escape economically suffocating places like California in order to move to the vastly more hospital economic climates found in Red States like Texas.

But federalism has been weakened over the years by the expansion of federal government. If we want to bolster competition among the states – and therefore constrain the greed of the political class, we need to devolve programs from Washington.

Not so fast. A blue majority of voters at the federal level could (and does) force redistribution from Red to Blue.

With the federal government still collecting close to 20% of GDP even from those who escaped to Florida, there is plenty of money for redistribution. And there are enough useful Red idiots to coalesce with the Blue into a permanent supermajority mandating that we help out those of our friends who got in trouble by flattening the effort-reward curves. Hence Federal Government expands. You can explicitly see that happening in Europe, and there is not even as strong of a Federal European Government (yet).

In the US, a substantial amount of this redistribution already happens indirectly right under our noses. For example:

When in California a coalition of Enviro-NIMBY voters taps into their inner urge to impose mandatory collectivism (and desire to shut others out of their paradise), forms a majority, and imposes severe zoning restrictions and thus chokes-off housing supply (at least supply of housing people want to live in, not the 1200 sqf Euro-apartments by the light rail tracks housing that Californians have to settle for because that is the only type of new housing allowed) then housing prices skyrocket to levels triple and quadruple the US average. That is essentially the embodiment of a “we found our paradise, now let’s lock the door by preventing others from doing to their land what was done to build our houses” mentality. Now, by golly, the sons and daughters of Californians cannot find affordable housing! They must pay triple price. Who pays for that? Amongst others, Federal Agencies, like FHA who will now subsidize loans to much higher levels in self-inflicted expensive housing California. So the poor chap who lives in the dreary North Dakota weather is prevented from moving to California through the “we found our California paradise, now let’s lock the door by preventing others from doing to their land what was done to build our houses” policy, yet he is forced to pay taxes into federal programs that help the sons and daughters of Californians ease the pain of unaffordable California housing and remain close to their Enviro-NIMBY parents in paradise.

This is just a small example of the entire indirect Federal redistribution equation, but many forms of redistribution are already in place at the Federal level to help out those voting groups who run their economies along the lines of socialist inefficiency and flatter effort-reward curves. This redistribution is one of the main underlying reasons there is great aggregate indirect majoritarian voter interest in further and further growth of the Federal government.

recently… an Egyptian official characterized John McCain as a “senile old man”… no matter how you view Senator McCain… it’s clear that a large number of our elected officials at both the state and federal level are simply out of touch with reality… they just don’t live in the same world as the rest of us… in their America… the political class has unlimited recourses and the citizens will pay any amount of tax self-aggrandizing politicians demand… in this fantasy land… the U.S. can achieve hegemonic domination of the planet at an affordable cost and democrats and republicans will [of course] get re-elected year after year by simple minded but adoring masses… addicted to government handouts… not gonna happen…… state and local governments have unfunded liabilities estimated on the low end at over one trillion dollars… and when the bubbles start bursting.. that figure will explode… think Detroit…….. on steroids… on the federal side… each point of increase in interest will add near 130 billion to the federal deficit… austerity… tax increases will happen… banks will close… people will lose vast sums of money… and the social safety net will collapse… and the lunatic fringe of the political class? they will retire… to build libraries… do good works… and spend time with young women minding them in Alzheimer’s wards… it’s justice?

Having been dethroned in worldwide economic liberty ranking for the first time in almost a century (#18 and sinking into a vicious cycle) Americans think their exceptional prosperity will last forever. The embodiment of their hope: Become like Europe… what an incredible delusion indeed.

One word: Detroit.
Yes, I escaped that state- Michigan because of its rising liberal social policies. A beautiful state to leave it was and still is. I escaped to Texas- the most freedom-loving state in the USA. Now others are escaping those liberal bastions NOT because of the social issues of liberalism, but because of the fiscal problems that liberal thinking promotes. They have sucked those states that did what they asked for to a state of dessication. And they are coming to areas where libertarian thinking has created such fiscal freedoms. And they are bringing in the ideas and voting for the very problems that created their problems to begin with.

In other words, they are like an infection that is spreading across the US- going from free state to free state, and eating up the very policies that keep us free, and then moving on to the next free area when they have sucked each one dry. Just look at the east coast. It was once the very bastion of freedom- now it has become an example of socialism and waste.

What we really need to do is eradicate these people from our society. Perhaps we should not allow people to vote who do not understand the American way of life and why it is better than all others. Perhaps a test??

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